Merde And Mandarins

Chapter 2

TWO

Delores Lovington, Della to her friends, was a Detective Inspector in the Met; and if you believe that, you’ll believe anything. Having said that, up until quite recently, Della herself thought she was a DI in the Met elite, Serious Crime Unit, who are often thought to be a law unto themselves, and if you knew Dynamo Della, you would have to concur. Aside from the fact Della was a petite blonde woman, strikingly beautiful, and the exact opposite of Jack Austin in looks, age and gender (though Jack did think he was good-looking and Mandy thought he was a tart), even Jack Austin had to admit Della was his dopy-banger, by which Jack meant doppelganger. Della was Jack’s spirit and essence, a cockney sparrow, except he wasn’t a bird, he was a tart, and if that did not seem so incongruous, she, to all intents, could be Jack Austin personified. She was the epitome of the cockney barrow boy, but a sparrow; a lady spiv, and Mandy had more than once wondered if Della was not another of Jack’s long-lost daughters; after all, she would not be the first to appear on Mandy’s horizon.

Della, after leaving university, had been recruited by Jack into MI5. Jack was never an action man spook; he was a liability if he was ever allowed out into the field. However, he was a mustard analyst with an ability to see the bigger picture, think laterally and to conceive strategy. Della had worked closely with Jack in her early days at MI5, which contained, or at least defrayed, any fall-out to Della’s caustic cavalier style. The Teflon coating which was always there for Jack Austin, ironically, seemed to rub off onto Della. However, the wheels came off for her when Jack returned to Portsmouth, and after a while of, “Brick shite-house, wanker, bureaucratic, pillock nonsense,” as she put it, quoting Mary Poppins, Della resigned, or so she thought, to a fast-track graduate programme in the Met.

Jack Austin returned to Portsmouth CID where he set up a benign unit called the Portsmouth Community Policing team, which, on occasion, did exactly what it said on the tin. It was a stroke of genius on Austin’s part, one he rarely got credit for, he would argue; a team of cowboy coppers who gelled, there to look into anything MI5 thought needed looking into, in Portsmouth, a south coast of England city of Naval, Military and Commercial strategic importance. The team functioned as a police unit, but under the radar it did a lot more, and over time, some of the team had been recruited fully into MI5.

Mandy was in, as she was now married to Jack, and this did elicit a lot of sympathy for the woman. Of the rest of the team, there was Jo-Jums, Detective Inspector Josephine Wild, a consummate copper, a mumsy figure with the sharp acuity that allowed her to run, under Detective Superintendent Bruce (now Mrs Austin), the Community Policing Team, the MI5 unit, while Jack settled back to being a consulate; people thought he meant consultant, but he had also said he was an Insultant, which was more than likely what he was. There was Frankie, the computer whizz, and of course Alice, Jack’s newly found, long-lost daughter who, although only just returning to service after an horrendous facial injury in a dog fight, was in because she had to be briefed on just who her dad really was, apart from being an ugly, jumped-up cockney barrow boy, which everyone knew; you couldn’t keep that a secret, even in MI5.

In all of this, it would be remiss to exclude Martin, Jack’s scruffy ginger Border Terrier, who had also recently been decorated by the Queen; a rub-down with the Sporting Life and two coats of emulsion, is what Jack told everyone. But it was a bravery award, The George Bone, which he received at an award ceremony where Jack received his George Medal, though Mandy argued that whereas Martin had been brave, Jack had won his medal for being a feckin’ eejit, and it said this on the citation, but only because Mandy had written that in, in pencil.

Martin now lived with Meesh, a little girl of about eight, whom Jack had rescued from a paedophile ring where, apart from being serially abused, the tiny, cherub-like girl had witnessed her mother being murdered. She was recovering, Martin an ever-present life stay, and living with the Splifs, a huge Roman Catholic working class family, who had taken Meesh in and gave her something she had never had before, a home, family, and unconditional love, albeit massively chaotic.

‘Ally ally in,’ Della called out as she stepped into the CP (Community Policing) room, ‘where the feck’s tosspot?’ she referred to Jack. ‘He still up wiv the bleedin’ Queen, Gawd bless her little cotton socks?’

Jo-Jums looked up from her immaculately organised desk. ‘Della, nice of you to drop in, I take it your brains are all f****d out now?’ Jo gave up her best sideways look, knowing Della had left a scene of c*****e at Fort Cumberland, The Glory Hole, and the Bank’s family crypt in the Eastney cemetery. It was a chaotic scene of bloodshed that she and her doppelganger, Jack Austin, had caused almost single-handedly, and, like her mentor, Jack, Della had left the scene and all of the admin work to others, to clear up the inordinate mess, following what the papers were calling the modern day equivalent of the Battles of Waterloo and Trafalgar.

Della’s excuse was she needed to get her brains shagged out by her new fella, Jonas the Gypo, who unfortunately had sustained a bullet wound or two in the melee, but that was never on Della's radar, whose caring genes were a little lacking in substance. That was it, and she could not see any holes (except the bullet ones in Jonas’s thigh and upper arm) in the logic and, when pressed, neither could Jack, who of course had also left the scene with his errant Superintendent wife, to get his one remaining, non-Alzheimer-affected, brain cell, shagged out, one presumed, as her Majesty would say.

The Community Policing Team could barely disguise their attenuated mirth, eagerly awaiting a witty response from the beautiful and quite amazing cockney sparrow. Della had only been on the team for a short time, and had already fashioned her indelible stamp; not least the recent blitzkrieg. The mayhem in the office was admin butchery, which everyone took on and was used to, because they had worked with a cockney barrow boy for some time; Della was just a better-looking addition to the team.

‘Not a bad rogering as Gypo shags go, Jo-Jums sweet’art, but Jonas was carrying a few injuries that, to be honest wiv yer, were just scratches, so I had to do most of the work. Still, isn’t that always the way with geezers, eh?’ She flicked her head, ‘A woman’s lot, I suppose,’ and Della went for wander around the cavernous, tired old room, inviting Jo-Jums to join her. ‘It can be so refreshing,’ she said. (Pride and Prejudice – I told you she had known Jack Jane Austin for a long time.)

The hall-like room was voluminous, even as it was, divided in half by an old wonky, bi-fold screen that had the Time Team researching as to when the doors had left their guide tracks; the best guess was shortly after the Romans, I Austinus arrived. Della strode like she owned the place, swerving past Jack’s deck chair (you moved that at your peril), and ruffled Nobby’s hair. She had a satisfied smile on her face, even if “She had to do all the bleedin’ work round ‘ere,” and that included her Gypo as well.

The Gypo in question was Jonas Sexton, now a firm fixture in Della’s life, and he had only himself to blame on that score. The landlord of the Gravediggers pub, opposite Eastney cemetery in Portsmouth, was a cosy, old-fashioned, local pub Jonas ran as a micro brewery, while his sister Pansy, the female equivalent of Hagrid but with no beard, ran the bed and breakfast above the pub with her partner Angel, who was not unlike Della in size and beauty, but more cherubic in appearance, and most certainly in behaviour.

Jonas, Heathcliffe out of Wuthering Heights, which was how Della described him, insisting he was "definitely not a bleedin’ Gypo as she couldn’t stand Gypos", had hooked up with Della in the most extraordinary circumstances, which of course you would expect, as it was a rare positive spin-off from one of Jack Austin’s hare-brained schemes. Jack wanted Della down in Portsmouth and re-recruited, so to speak, and it was l**t and love at first sight for the cockney sparrow who had been sent down by the Met fraud and murder squad to observe Sebastian Sexton, the youngest of the Sexton siblings, who was Asperger’s, on the autistic spectrum, and lived in a cemetery.

Della was following a lead on the s*******r of the Head of the Military, the Cabinet Secretary and Government Chief Whip, and a man they called Pomerol, in a house just off Whitehall and Pall Mall, in London. John Sexton, the chairman of the City of London Merchant bank Cedric James, and husband to Beryl, father of Jonas, Pansy and Sebastian, had his fingerprints all over the conference room. However, he could not be fingered for the crime, as at the time he had been brokering a deal with the financial doves of Europe, which eventually rescheduled Britain’s debt over a more manageable seventy years.

John Sexton bought the cemetery and the Gravediggers pub at the insistence of Seb, their name being Sexton. John, Beryl and Seb lived in The Old Sexton House, and Seb, a computer genius, great problem solver and code breaker, worked out of, and rarely left, the Sexton’s shed, which had been fitted out as a state-of-the-art computer suite, courtesy of Jack Austin and MI5; Seb was one of Jack’s big successes, a natural, and did all the problem-solving for Jack, who was very busy looking like Captain Kirk.

Father Mike O’Brien was O’Hurra, though Mandy erroneously though she was. No, he had appointed Mandy as Spok, and if you looked under her long, raven black, glossy hair, you would see a set of pointy ears, though Jack recommended that if you wanted to survive the subsequent Vulcan death grip, it would be best to take his word for it – most people did, and with a pinch of salt, “Like what Fireguard (we think he meant Kierkegaard) would do,” Jack would tell them.

So, Della had come to Portsmouth to observe this family and Seb in particular, but had been captivated by Jonas, which Jack saw as a bonus as it would keep Della in Portsmouth, right where he wanted her. She hated being manipulated, and manipulated by Jack Austin was number one up there on her number one hate list, and she had many lists and Jack was on most of them. However, she could now stay down and appear to be seen reluctantly dragged, kicking and screaming, back into the MI5 fold, her excuse being she was shagging a country yokel, also her excuse for emigrating from the Smoke. “No self-respecting Londoner would ever want to leave London, you see,” she would explain, but only Londoners understood this.

Jo-Jums stood, hands on her childbearing hips, which had been called into action four times, her children still all school age, and she watched as Della strode about the space she considered her domain – this woman has no shame. ‘Della, debriefing notes on yesterday would be helpful.’

Della stopped her pacing. ‘Unless Jack has described to me somebody other than you, Jo, I would guess you already know evryfink, right?’

Jo-Jums was not a woman to be pushed around, either. ‘How would I know, until you have told me all that you know? It’s a lot like us interrogating prisoners. We know that they did it, but sometimes it comes in handy if we ask a few questions to get to the salient points, like, what the feck happened?’ Jo had her feet firmly planted, her stance and fixed face challenging; water off a sparrow’s back for Della, who continued circling, unabashed.

‘Yeah, see where yer coming from, sweet’art, but I’ll leave that bit to you if you don’t mind, darlin’, that’s admin. I’m more concerned about that bird, Beth Mayhew.’ Della paced some more, metaphorically scratching her arse, a lot like Jack does when he’s thinking, only he doesn’t do it metaphorically, but meteorologically; he had a bum like cumuli nimbus, and frequently demonstrates this with thunder and lightning.

Jo allowed time to drift, but curiosity eventually got the better of her. ‘What about Beth Mayhew?’

‘What’s what about Beth Mayhew?’ Della replied mischievously.

Jo saw Della had not only managed to wind her up, but had also successfully circumvented her original questions. ‘You said you were worried about Beth Mayhew… Or are you mainly worried that Jonas, the feckin’ Gypo, is injured and can only lie there while you do all the work?’

Della turned on Jo. ‘He’s not a fuckin’ Gypo!’ Miraculously, she calmed. ‘Alright, he might be a Gypo…’ and she lolled her head like a lovelorn sparrow, ‘…but he don’t live in a feckin’ caravan or sell lucky ‘evver,’ she thought, then recalled he had some heather in his bedroom; shite.

‘So, he has lucky heather, does he?’

Della had her answer for Jo, and waving her Julie Andrews, Climb Every Mountain hands, quickly responded, ‘Yeah, it’s for cooking, see?’ Face saved, she made a mental note to chuck the heather out. Bugger the luck bit, and it might not have been that lucky; she’d missed her period.

‘Della, Beth Mayhew?’

Almost as an inconsequential thought, Della replied, ‘Yeah Jo, she’s coming down ‘ere. I’m gonna put her up in our bed and breakfast, well, Pansy and Angel’s bed and breakfast. The safe gaff’s blown, you knew that, didn’t you? And you knew Jack, the feckin’ tosspot, wanted to allow it to be blown, probably blew it himself,’ she said, acknowledging a light bulb moment. ‘He’d arranged for Jimbo to follow the turnip bad guys. Anyway, I’ve countermanded it ‘cause he’s wrong, see? To be ‘onest with yer, gorgeous, I fink he’s lost it good an’ proper,’ and she sloped her head and grinned to assert just how right she was.

‘You countermanded, Jack?’ It was then that Jo noticed all of the room focused on the conversation between her and Della. ‘What about Del-Boy?’ Jo asked, pursuing her point with animated vigour. Del-Boy was the MI5 field officer attached to the monkey spanner spies.

‘Del-Boy, that feckin’ girl’s blouse, what does he know about the price of fish, except he probably knows now as Jimbo is bringing Beth down,’ and then Della seemed to have another light bulb moment. ‘That’s what I wanted to say when I came in ‘ere, I knew there was something. Jo, expect a call from Del-Boy, and while you’re at it, put some people on the Gravediggers, will you, babes, and I’ll be yer best friend.’ She explained, not that she needed to, ‘In case we need a bit of back-up while I’m fuckin’ Jonas, and, as I’m doin’ all the bleedin’ work, I can’t be expected to do surveillance, naturally.’ She applied her smug sparrow face and pursed her beak. She’d ended her dawn chorus and was likely thinking of whistling Dixie, Jo thought.

Jo was dumbfounded as Della shaped to leave. ‘You off? Nice of you to pop in.’

Della stopped at the door. ‘Sorry, Jo, but I’m as randy as a fuckin’ rabbit from Sainsbury’s, so even if I have to sit on top and do it all meself, I’ve just gotta go an’ get me brains fecked out again,’ and Della departed, leaving Jo standing with her hands on her expansive hips.

Nobby, a Detective Constable, and coincidentally the Chief Constable’s son and now partner to Jack’s new daughter, Alice (honestly, you need to read the previous books – for heaven’s sake, do I have to do everything around here?), spoke up and gestured with the phone in his hand.

‘What is it, Nobby?’ Jo-Jums replied, irritated, venting some of her frustration on the young lad.

It was wasted, however, as Nobby giggled conspiratorially with the rest of the room, the phone in his hand, ‘It’s Del-Boy, for you.’